Actress Kristen Bell has quit the voiceover role of a mixed-race child on the Apple TV+ animated show, Central Park.
Per the Independent, The Good Place star voiced Molly, an aspiring comic book artist, who is the daughter of a black man (voiced by Leslie Odom Jr.) and a white woman (voiced by Kathryn Hahn).
In a statement posted to Twitter, Bell wrote: "This is a time to acknowledge our acts of complicity. Here’s one of mine. Playing the Molly [sic] in Central Park shows a lack of awareness of my pervasive privilege. Casting a mixed race character w/a white actress undermines the specificity of the mixed race & Black American experience."
Another statement, posted by the show's creative team, disclosed that "after reflection" they decided that Bell would remain on the series, albeit in a different role, and that they would be casting a mixed-race actor as Molly to ''get representation right.''
''We profoundly regret that we might have contributed to anyone’s feeling of exclusion or erasure. Black people and people of color have worked and will continue to work on Central Park but we can do better. We’re committed to creating opportunities for people of color and Black people in all roles, on all our projects – behind the mic, in the writer's room, in production, and in post-production.''
Back in January, the show's creator, Loren Bouchard, defended Bell's casting.
"Kristen needed to be Molly,” he said, according to the Independent. "We couldn’t not make her Molly. But then we couldn’t make Molly white and we couldn’t make Kristen mixed race so we just had to go forward.”
This comes after actress Jenny Slate quit her voiceover role on Netflix's Big Mouth. Slate voiced the black character, Missy, on the series.
She said: "black characters on an animated show should be played by black people."
